@madshi: not sure if you're notified or not automatically, I've added links in the bug report to a few posts which might make it pretty simple for you to support the 65 points LUT format, please take a look when you have a minute.

Hello Manni, do you mean that you asked to support the 64p LUT eeColor format, 65p is currently supported.

Can anyone elaborate on the black point compensation setting? My understanding is that it should only be turned off if your monitor can actually display 0-level blacks (OLED) because what BPC actually does is remap absolute blacks to the lowest black level that your display can actually achieve, correct?

I need some newbie help. First let me introduce and tell you what I m looking for and what my setup is:
I own a dedicated HTPC and I use this for all my 2D Blu-Ray playback. I don t use Blu-Ray menu and I cannot even use them even if I wanted to because the player I use is MPC-BE. I use madVR as output renderer. madVR is set to PC levels (0-255). I use LAV filters and LAV video is set to RGB output UNTOUCHED. My GPU is a AMD 280x and the Pixel Format setting is set on 'RGB 4:4:4 Pixel Format PC Standard (Full RGB)' My display device is a JVC DLA-RS49 projector and my HDMI settings is set on ' Enhanced'.

The meter I use for Greyscale and Gamma calibration (which I already did and looks like the picture below) is a 'i1 Display 3 Pro' by Chromapure.

The CMS system on the JVC projector is pretty outdated and I got a hint from user Manni to use the CMS option that madVR provides. So here I am, at the beginning of calibrating my CMS with my HTPC with madVR.

think about a correction file and use aero to make sure the screen is not tearing and result in a wrong reading( unlikely but better save then sorry) and by reading your post i think you are on a AMD gpu so tearing is totally normal without aero.

and use the interactive display adjustment to set your device to the right white point.

Last edited by mightyhuhn; 07-03-2014 at 06:06 AM.
Reason: removed wrong information "you can use smooth a2b tables it was added for 3d lut creation in mind."

I don't know how the Lumagen does dithering. Dithering is supposed to be different *per pixel* in such a way that it averages to the correct value if you look at multiple neighboring pixels. When doing measurements, the test patterns usually consist of a whole screen of the same color. If you do this with dithering turned on, some pixels might have 1 value lower, while other pixels might have 1 value higher. But if you average all pixels, you should get exactly the desired color value. Now a meter does not measure single pixels, it measures the averaged light output of several neighbor pixels. So dithering should not cause any problems with calibration, IMHO. Furthermore, even *if* the meter would measure only one single pixel, you can setup madVR to change the dithering pattern for every new frame, which means that each pixel will change its dithering value all the time. Again a meter does not measure a pixel for only one video frame, but it measures it over a longer period, so again the dithering should average itself out.

The JRP post about dithering had a different reason: Some user had monitored the Lumagen test pattern output and found that some pixels didn't have the expected values. If this was caused by dithering, this should have no consequence (see above). But the user was concerned that the Lumagen might output wrong pixels *everywhere*, so JRP explained that the "problem" might be caused by dithering, not by the Lumagen outputting incorrect values.

All this said: If the test calibration software driving madVR/madTPG requests color values which don't need dithering, madVR will automatically not use dithering. madTPG only dithers if the calibration software asks for a value which can't be represented without dithering. So basically the calibration software has the option to drive madTPG with un-dithered clean pixels, if it carefully chooses the "right" test pattern colors. Just as an example:

Let's say the calibration software wants to measure grayscale IRE 10. When considering 0.0 as black and white as 1.0, IRE 10 should be 0.1. When using 8bit TV levels output (16-235) this would be 8bit value 37.9. This is a floating point value. So basically madTPG *cannot* technically render this requested test pattern color without using dithering. As a result madTPG will display most pixels as 38 and a few pixels in between as 37. If the calibration software wants to avoid dithering, it could ask madTPG whether the output levels are TV or PC (there's a madTPG API for that) and then the calibration software could be clever enough to round the measured IRE to the nearest cardinal value. So basically the calibration software could ask for (38 - 16)/219 = 0.100456621[...]. This would result in madVR disabling dithering and always outputting 38 for all pixels. Of course the calibration software would then have to change its math a bit to take into consideration that it didn't measure IRE 10, but instead IRE 10.0456621[...]. But that should be quite doable. AFAIK most DVD test patterns round to the next cardinal value, anyway, so using DVD test patterns, the calibration software would probably measure 10.0456621[...], anyway.

BTW, madTPG's dithering quality is probably quite a bit higher than the Lumagen's dithering quality. From what I read (on some forum, so take it with a pinch of salt), the Lumagen uses simple random dithering, which adds quite a bit of extra noise and changes almost every pixel in some way. madTPG's default dithering method is much less noisy and only changes pixels if they need to be changed.

btw I have a NVIDIA Quadro K1100M, is it best to check use other application to control color setting,etc or use NVIDIA and its default setting when using madTPG. ?

Also would it work if I change my video card from RGB to 4:4:4, if so I would turn on support for YC 4:4:4 in my VT60 plasma, is there any other setting I should use in madVR or ArgyII to epitomize that setting.?

RGB is the recommend output, with 0-255 levels. You may have to use the madLevelsTweaker to make that work with NVidia GPUs, if you use your GPU's HDMI output. If you configure the GPU to output YCbCr, the GPU driver will convert madVR's RGB output to YCbCr behind madVR's back, which is a bad idea because NVidia's algorithm is probably not highest quality (with dithering etc). It's recommend to leave all settings in the GPU control panel either "off" or set to application control. We don't want NVidia to do some fancy processing (meaning do violence) to madVR's output.

All this said: If the test calibration software driving madVR/madTPG requests color values which don't need dithering, madVR will automatically not use dithering. madTPG only dithers if the calibration software asks for a value which can't be represented without dithering. So basically the calibration software has the option to drive madTPG with un-dithered clean pixels, if it carefully chooses the "right" test pattern colors.

Currently it is best to leave dithering on when using the two software packages that support madVR (ArgyllCMS and HCFR). ArgyllCMS sends all triplets exactly as they are defined by targen without regard to whether they represent whole 8-bit integers or not and assumes targets to match.

HCFR sends all triplets percentages as representing video level whole integers (and assumes those targets) so when madVR is set to 16-235 dithering will be disabled but when set to 0-255 (or other) dithering is necessary.

Yes, I definitely never recommend to completely turn off dithering in madVR/madTPG. IIRC, madTPG even ignores it if you tell it to do that. If the calibration software doesn't want dithering, it just has to send test pattern colors which end up as 8bit integer values. In that case madVR/madTPG won't apply dithering, anyway.

think about a correction file and use aero to make sure the screen is not tearing and result in a wrong reading( unlikely but better save then sorry) and by reading your post i think you are on a AMD gpu so tearing is totally normal without aero.

and use the interactive display adjustment to set your device to the right white point.

- correction file: what do you mean with this?
- aero: why do I need Aero??? I disabled all unneccesary 'esthetical' things in windows including Aero (I think)
- use the interactive display adjustment: also not a single clue what you mean here...... (sorry!!)

All these things are not mentioned in the starting post (guide) so I hope you guys don t blame me for asking about these things.

- correction file: what do you mean with this?
- aero: why do I need Aero??? I disabled all unneccesary 'esthetical' things in windows including Aero (I think)
- use the interactive display adjustment: also not a single clue what you mean here...... (sorry!!)

without aero you get tearing and that's not something "esthetical" aero is not part of windows because it can make things shinny. i "crippled" aero to nothing but "desktop composition"
a correction file is a file shipped with your meter this file increase the quality of the calibration. you can grap them by installing the software of your meter and using the automated tool in dispcal gui you find it under tools.

It's explained in this post as removing the black offset directly from the measurements and then rescaling the result (I presume so that white XYZ is mapped back to it's original value). I don't know in practice how similar that result will be to what -f0 achieves in dispcal.

It's explained in this post as removing the black offset directly from the measurements and then rescaling the result (I presume so that white XYZ is mapped back to it's original value). I don't know in practice how similar that result will be to what -f0 achieves in dispcal.

without aero you get tearing and that's not something "esthetical" aero is not part of windows because it can make things shinny. i "crippled" aero to nothing but "desktop composition"
a correction file is a file shipped with your meter this file increase the quality of the calibration. you can grap them by installing the software of your meter and using the automated tool in dispcal gui you find it under tools.

meter correction file: I ll need to check at Chromapure but all I got from them is a Licence file for Chromapure but this is not what you mean of course. I know my meter is not a regular OEM i1 Display 3 Pro meter but a meter that was calibrated by Chromapure

Interactive Display Adjustment: I want to know what this is so if you want to explain it to me this would be great

yeah you can enable it here don't play around in the services. sometimes you need to enable more settings i don't know why. when aero is disabled or enabled the screen will get black for a sec and the taskbar changes color. but this is the wrong thread to talk about aero. one last thing about aero you should always use aero except you are using FSE fullscreen in MadVR it doesn't real harm there too but it's not needed for tearing free playback i think overlay mode works fine without to not sure.

Interactive display adjustment gives you the possibility to pre calibrate your device . it shows you the current colortemp and the current brightness. so you can change the white point to 6500 by changing the settings of your device same goes for brightness you can setup brightness. i think is was 120 cm² for 100% correct color i don't use 120 cm² so not sure and i don't really care.

and you can add infos like these in the guide this is an total overkill on informations. getting on correction is not an easy task for someone that never did it and not all meter have correction.